Dixons launches the cheapest 3D TV range ever, but is this 42-incher any good?

3D performance

Kicking the picture testing off with 3D, the Logik L423ED11 looks a little rough and ready thanks to the appearance of some horizontal line structure in the image caused by the passive 3D filter, and a slightly soft look versus the finest active 3D images. There's also a little more crosstalk than you get with LG's costlier passive 3D TVs.

However, the amount of crosstalk is still minimal versus that seen with most active TVs. And as usual, watching passive 3D feels more relaxing than the active approach, especially because there's no flickering to deal with.

Also likable is how bright and colourful 3D pictures look on the Logik L423ED11, and the TV handles 3D motion surprisingly decently too, with little sign of the sort of blurring often found with cheap LCD TVs.

2D performance

There are times when the Logik L423ED11 looks better than expected with 2D, too. Feed it a bright HD image and you'll likely feel very happy indeed with how pictures look. The sharpness and detail on show with such footage shames some TVs costing twice as much, while colours also look clean and punchy.

Unfortunately the Logik L423ED11 is a heck of a lot less comfortable with any other sort of footage - as in, anything that's standard definition and/or mostly dark. With standard definition the TV set's upscaling processing doesn't do a great job of either adding sharpness to the source or suppressing any noise it might contain. It's also notable that colours tend to suffer with more 'offish' tones than you get during HD viewing.

The Logik L423ED11's biggest single problem, though, is without doubt its total inability to produce anything approaching a convincing black colour. Dark scenes instead look like they're appearing through a grey fog, making it hard to see what's going on at times, and making dark colours look routinely unnatural.

There's practically no shadow detail to be seen either, making dark scenes feel flat and empty and thus startlingly different to any bright scenes that might appear either side of them.

Making matters even worse are unmissable signs during dark scenes of backlight inconsistency from the Edge LED backlight system. And then there's the way that the Logik L423ED11's contrast drops to almost nothing if you have to watch the screen from a wider angle down the side than 30-35 degrees.

There's a separate viewing angle limitation with 3D, too. If you find yourself watching the screen from as little as 10 degrees or so above or below it, 3D images go from having very little crosstalk to being absolutely plagued by it.

However, it's worth adding that the black level problems on the Logik L423ED11 are slightly less pronounced with 3D, thanks to the gentle dimming effect of the passive 3D glasses.

Sound

Joining the Logik L423ED11's strikingly up and down pictures is a passable audio performance that manages to avoid the horrible weediness and tendency to distort sound of many budget TVs, but also lacks the range and raw power to really do action scenes justice.

Gaming

Any gamers thinking the Logik L423ED11 might be a good budget 3D gaming option might be cheered to hear that the set only introduces a respectable sub-40ms of input lag. But to be honest, the severe lack of black level response is likely to cause far more 'unfair' deaths during your games than a bit more input lag probably would have!